Published on 12:00 AM, April 02, 2013

Perfect plot; time to play it 'right'

Unscrupulous online activists of Jamaat-Shibir opened fake blog page of Shahbagh youths, filled it with contents insulting Islam

In a ploy to label a Shahbagh blogger as "yet another atheist", pro-Jamaat-Shibir online activists have created a fake blog page of Arif Jebtik and filled it with articles demeaning Islam and Prophet Muhammad (pbuh).
The blog registered with wordpress.com contains six atheistic posts and insulting cartoons. Five of them have been posed to be posted simultaneously on July 4, 2011 and one on September 1, 2010.
However, a click on the picture links of these posts show that they were posted in February this year.
Arif has been writing in socio-political blogs www.sachalayatan.com, amarblog.com, and in somewhereinblog.net for more than four years. These blogs open to public have no contents offensive to religion.
Seeing the fake blog, Arif on March 20 published a post in his facebook page: "They have planned to kill me, as they have created a blog in wordpress.com and posted atheistic write-ups on back dates demeaning Islam and Muhammad (pbuh).
"Jamaat-Shibir will circulate and promote this blog in the social media introducing me as an atheist even before my blood stains the footpath after they have slaughtered me," read Arif's post.
A technical analysis by another blogger, however, reveals that the fake wordpress blog under Arif's name  [http://jebtikarif.wordpress.com] was created on February 22 at 23:43:23pm, just seven days after the killing of blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider. Rest of the posts were uploaded in the next 40 minutes, shows the sitemap of the blog account.
But the creator of the blog could not modify the upload time of the photos or the cartoons. By default the photos were saved in the folder of the actual month when the photos had been uploaded, which is February.
Arif in his facebook post said he had never written or uploaded those posts. He, in fact, does not have any blog on wordpress.com.
Referring to the editor of a pro-Jamaat-Shibir newspaper, Arif said he [the editor] would publish the screenshot of the fake blog on the first page of his newspaper to prove that he [Arif] was an atheist.
"They are trying to eliminate us by treating us as their political opponents. As part of the plan they had been filing cases against us showing these pages," said Arif, adding, "I have reported the matter to Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), but to no avail."
He told The Daily Star that Jamaat-Shibir men had been creating fake online pages using names of some other bloggers and activists, including Imran H Sarker and Omi Rahman Pial.
Omi Rahman Pial, well known for his research-based write-ups on the Liberation War, has also been made a similar target. The Jamaat-Shibir activists opened a few facebook accounts and at least one blog using his name and posted anti-religious write-ups, which Pial never wrote.
“I lodged a general diary with Rampura Model Police Station regarding the matter. They [the Jamaat-Shibir activists] are doing this as they would file a case against us showing those blogs,” Pial said.
Some other bloggers and activists, who have been demanding death penalty for war criminals at Shahbagh, claimed that Jamaat-Shibir had targeted some of them.
In February, fanatics killed blogger Rajib.
After the killing, a blog with atheistic write-ups titled "Nurani Chapasomogro" [A Collection of Holy Lies] was circulated in the social network claiming that Rajib had been an atheist and his murder was justified.
Law enforcers said the five students of North South University, who had been arrested in connection with the murder, admitted that they had killed Rajib for the anti-Islam write-ups in his blog.